


Unbroken

by Denzer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animal Stress, Childbirth mentioned but not detailed, Cowboy!Ben, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Deepthroating, F/M, Horseback Riding, Horses, Minor Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Oral Sex, POV Ben Solo, Penis In Vagina Sex, Pregnancy, Rey & Rose Tico Are Best Friends, Rey Needs A Hug, Rose is Pregnant for most of this fic, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Vaginal Sex, animal injury but I promise he'll be fine, cute baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:01:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26799988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denzer/pseuds/Denzer
Summary: He found her sleeping in the stables, curled up in the stall of his newest, unbroken colt...
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 149
Kudos: 468





	Unbroken

He found her sleeping in the stables, curled up in the stall of his newest, unbroken colt. Rose had wrapped his thumb and wrist tight when the horse had reared, yanked him off his feet, and near tore his hand clean off. But this little slip of a girl, blearily wiping a dirty hand over her face, elicited no more than a faint, uneasy huff.

He warned her all the same, leaning into the doorpost with crossed arms.

“This horse ain’t broke. You be slow coming out.”

She stood and placed her hand on Buzzard's flank, coo’ing under her breath. When she looked at him, Ben straightened his spine a little, a thin crack from the middle of his back.

“He’s not bad, he’s just frightened,” she told him, leaning into the horse as if she could disappear into its flank. 

Ben stiffened, worked his jaw to spit, and then remembered himself. “I didn’t say he was a bad horse, I said he was untrained, and that’s a real fine accent for someone sleeping in shit. What you running from, hmm?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she trailed her hand up Buzzard's neck to his ears, stroking down his forehead and smiling when he dipped his head to butt her shoulder. Ben tensed again, reaching out to pull her back from a bite. But the colt stayed docile, and he found himself with a hand around the girl’s elbow that had no earthly reason being there.

She spooked. Worse than any horse he’d ever trained, bolting passed him and out the stable doors before he could explain. Fast, for such a tiny thing. By the time he’d jogged to the yards, she’d already scaled the tall, metal gates, racing down the dirt track that lead to the main house.

“Hey, hold up!” he called after her, “I didn’t mean…” he trailed off because she couldn’t hear him. She was nothing but a peel of dust and blurred feet beyond the gates. He hoped she’d run into Rose or Hux, get some breakfast. She looked like she could use a meal and Rose could make anyone feel safe. Ben would know.

* 

She comes to his room every night now, bare legs still dirty from Buzzards moonlit ride. The horse likes it best when he can run unfettered and Ben’s pretty sure she rides him bareback when no-ones watching. The saddle always looks untouched when he checks the gear in the mornings. 

There’s never anything but soft skin under her slip. She does this so there can’t be any confusion about what she wants. That first time, Ben had just held her, thinking it was what she’d needed. Instead, she had shaken with want that eventually, after hours of gentle handling, had turned into tears. It had taken Rey weeks to come back after that and when she did, she’d come to him naked.

He always starts the same way; half-asleep, pulling her against his chest and curling her over. He loops his arms around her, presses his thighs to the backs of hers so she can feel what she’s doing to him, just by letting him touch her. On her bad days, she starts moving before him, rocking against him so he can’t help but give her what she wants.

On really bad days, she asks him to hurt her. And Ben does. He’ll hold her down, push into her before she’s really ready. He’ll mark her skin with his palm and his mouth. He’ll wrap his hand around her throat and try not to hear the desperate sound of her breath. Every time he stops or holds back, she’ll beg, “Please, Ben, I need it,” with eyes so wide he can see right down into the hurt. And every time, it hurts him more.

* 

“Ben, get in here!”

He slips his boots off in the mudroom, calls a slow “Yes, ma’am,” through the open kitchen door.

The girl is at the table, holding a mug of coffee in both hands. She’s staring at it, won’t look up at him.

“This is Rey, she works here now.” 

Rose has a dishcloth in her hand, her free palm rubs the small round to her belly as she speaks. She waves the cloth at him when he doesn’t respond, “You’ll pay her in cash and she’ll stay in the guest bed here until I can get one of the boys to prep the old cottage. Alright?”

Ben looks Rey over, frayed bell-bottom jeans and the same small t-shirt she’d worn two days ago when he’d frightened her in the stables. She doesn’t look up until he asks her, “Can you ride?”

No smile, but something like one at the corners of her eyes. Like she’d bolt right out of the chair if she got the chance to saddle and let loose. “I can,” she tells him. Her voice sounds steady but her eyes are almost glassy and Ben can’t tell if it’s fear or relief he’s seeing there.

“That settles that, then,” Rose pipes up when the silence stretches and neither of them has looked away, “Rey’s gonna need some set-up money for clothes and such. I’ll take it from the sundries account today when I run her into town.”

Rose isn’t asking permission but Ben answers anyway, keeping his eyes on Rey because she looks like she needs the certainty. He’s quiet and quick about it. “Alright then, get her what she needs.”

Rey’s cheeks flush and she looks back at her cup. He doesn’t hear her murmured ‘thank you’ but, as he’s stripping off the rest of his gear in the mud-room, Ben listens with a faint sense of wrongness that he ignores.

“Why would he take me on like that? He doesn’t even know me.”

Rose is quieter than usual, almost as soft as when she’s sad.

“Like knows like, I s’pose. You don’t have to be afraid of him, Rey. Ben’s one of the good ones.”

“There are no good ones.”

Ben takes the back stairs to go clean up, slipping away because he knows he shouldn’t have heard that.

* 

On the good days, she’ll talk a little. She’ll sigh and whisper things that make him harder as he sways his hips against her and works her with his fingers. She’ll let him tuck his head into the back of her neck. She’ll lean back against him and raise her arm to thread her fingers through his hair. She comes so pretty that sometimes Ben has to press his mouth closed so he doesn’t say what he wants to. 

If he’s hurting, he’ll try to hide it, but Rey always knows. Even when she’s wild and scratching, she watches for it, has him sit against the headboard and hold onto it, so she can bounce in his lap with total control.

She doesn’t kiss him, ever, and Ben longs for it with a violence he’s never prepared for. Once, she’d pressed her lips so close to his mouth that he’d let go of the bed and grasped her hips hard, pulling her down with brutal jerks, spilling with a shout that had embarrassed him for days after. He’d thought she’d run after that, leave the room right away, like she does when he holds her too gently or when her name slips out as he comes. But that night she wrapped her arms around his neck, lay beside him, and stayed almost till morning.

The memory of it is enough to make him agree when the next time she wants him to take her rough, hand over her mouth as she struggles hard to free herself. Both of them are bruised after and Ben has to explain a bloody lip to Rose. The first of many quick-shifting, mumbled lies.

*

It was days before he saw her again. She was gone before he got up and she ate in her room at night. It was like living with a ghost except for the thank-you note she left on the counter and his constant awareness of her. Ben found himself listening hard when the pipes clanked or the furniture scraped as she moved things around. He was on edge, couldn’t settle, no matter how many times he told himself to go easy, to stop thinking.

Unnerving, how he jumped when she joined him in the kitchen for breakfast that Sunday, six days after they’d been introduced.

“Rose told me that you hurt your back.” Just like that, no preamble, like she’d been working herself up to it and it all had to come in one big rush or she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to speak at all.

He nodded. Without warning, all the words were on the tip of his tongue, all the horror of that day, right there, like he would pour it all out to her. Ben had to remind himself that he didn’t even know her last name, reining himself in with a long gulp of too-hot coffee.

“Hurt it riding rough stock, up in Fairbanks, a while back. It got away from me, I guess. Broke two vertebrae, fractured my skull,” he told her, like that was all there was to it.

He hadn’t known how much Rose had told her until Rey cocked her head to the side and said “Oh,” like she was disappointed. Then, he figured that Rose had told her nothing, and his heart warmed a little more toward his best friend’s wife, like it did most days.

Gesturing to the bacon and eggs he’d left in the middle of the table, Ben stood, like he should have done when she’d first come in. She took a skittering step back against the sink, hands clenched by her sides. It was his height, he thought, that was making her freeze up like that, so he hunched his shoulders for her as he left the room, trying to take some of the fear out of her. He stopped outside the door, turned back with half his body hidden behind the frame.

“I’ll be up at the north pens till lunchtime. After that, I head on out to Hux’s place for Sunday dinner. If you, ah…”

He was holding a Stetson, watching his fingers work the rim and he was suddenly aware that he couldn’t be more country if he tried. He dropped his hands and looked right at her. “I’m sure Rose would love to have you. If you wanna come, I can give you a ride?”

It worked on horses too, quiet, direct eye contact steadied them. Rey’s shoulders relaxed and she leaned back into the sink, shifted her weight to her heels. “Actually, she already asked me. I’d love to go.”

“Alright, then.”

* 

After that first night, where her tears had run down his forearm and he hadn’t known what to do to stop it other than hold her tighter, Rey doesn’t show any emotion. Pleasure, sure. He learns how to pull all sorts of different sounds from her; moans, and grunts, and screams, and crying his name. His favourite is when she babbles incoherent, twisting and shaking as he brings her over the edge again. How she looks in those moments; it’s as if all those awful thoughts she came to him with, the ones that were written all over her face when she stepped through his bedroom door, have been pushed right out of her with his mouth and his cock. Like she’s been filled up with everything he’s feeling so there’s no more room for terrible things.

He doesn’t touch her during the day. He’d tried it, once, put a hand on her waist to steady her as she jumped the last rung of the barn-ladder. She hadn’t known it was Ben. He’d been watching her so quietly as she worked, he’d forgotten to announce himself. She elbowed him hard in the gut, swung around to kick him and he’d only barely been able to block the knee to his groin.

That was the first night she asked him for more than just pleasure. She held his hands to either side of her head and shoved his cock so far into her mouth that her throat had closed around him. At first, he’d jerked back, and pulling from her caused a soft gag. But she’d looked at him with a pleading that had gone straight to his dick and he’d let her move him, pulling his hips forward till her spit dripped from her chin and her eyes watered spikes into her lashes. In the end, he’d gripped her, bent almost double, and pulled back to see himself spurt into her open mouth. She’d wrapped herself around him after, came quick and easy on his thigh, and stayed there for hours as he rubbed her back. The next time she asked for rough, he gave it to her, just to feel that quiet softness again.

* 

She broke Buzzard in less than a month, had him circling the yards like it was what he’d wanted to do in the first place. Ben and Poe watched from the gates as she took the horse through its motions, effortless. She grinned a little as she passed them and Ben tipped his hat, shading his eyes from her.

Their elbows were resting on the wood, spurs kicking dirt up as if their boots knew they oughta’ be working. When she dropped Buzzard down into a deep bow, Poe whistled a long low note and asked “Where’d you get _her_?”

Ben shrugged, watching her gently guide the animal back to its station, checking for any sign the horse might buck. “Rose brought her in. You know how she gets.”

Poe was staring right at him. “Rey come here all alone? Pretty little thing like that?”

Ben clenched his fists, pulled back from the fence to shove them in his pockets. He thought of her jumping those gates, the adrenaline it must have taken to climb that fast. How natural it came to her to run.

When he turned, he stood at his full height, ignoring the crack deep in his centre that he was sure was audible, looking down on Poe with an expression that made the man freeze in place, one foot still resting on the bottom lat of the pen-fence.

He'd forgotten. He'd grown so used to hunching for her, making himself less threatening, even when nothing of him wanted to hurt anymore.

“That’s enough,” Ben told Poe, and then gave an order, something he hadn’t done since he hired him, “Leave her be. The boys too, you got it?”

Poe turned his head to the side, gripping the fence hard to hide a slow grin, “Yup, I reckon I got it, alright.”

By the time Rey had brushed Buzzard down, Rose was already pulling up with lunch. Ben took his basket and left the girls to it, heading to the cattle chutes with Poe in tow.

Later, at dinner, the weekly envelope on Rey’s place setting had more money in it than they’d agreed, and Rey trained every new colt they took on after that. She got comfortable, after a while, and Rose never could spare anyone to fix the cottage roof.

* 

It’s almost winter by the time Ben figures he needs to officially hire her. By that stage, they eat dinner together most nights, quiet as she tells him how the stables are running, or he gives his run-down on the next day’s tasks.

“Rey, can you sign this?” He pushed the paper across the dinner table. He’d been waiting for her to finish eating and the fire had run low. Her cheeks were still pink from riding in the cold and Ben had to focus on his feet. Itching to take his boots off and slip into bed to read, and wait.

He’d thought she’d be happy, the position he was was offering, the benefits, the pension. But she went cold. Stared at the forms like they’d rear up and throw her. When she looked at him, he saw all the ways this could go wrong and his stomach dropped a little.

“You said you’d pay me in cash. Rose promised you wouldn’t make me...” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper.

He held up his hands, palms opened up, like he was steering an animal to where he wanted it to go.

“Alright, Rey. No forms. No information. But you manage the stables now, if you want. Just tell Rose what you need, OK?” Steady voice, stomach held tight and shoulders curled in to make himself smaller in his seat.

Rey left the forms on the table and walked to the doorway. She teetered there and Ben could see the tension in her legs, shifting her weight like she was gearing up to sprint. He thought of how those thighs had shaken around his neck and, already, he knew he was in over his head.

“This is all I have, Ben, all I can give you. I’m just Rey," she presses her fingrs into the doorfrane in a gesture Ben knows if more for hin than her, "Please, don’t ask again.”

He didn't say anything. His throat burned and he wasn't sure he could hide it as well as she could. Instead, he gave her the barest nod, a whispered “Yes, ma’am,” and then lay awake all night in a cold bed. 

* 

“Ben? Are you alright?”

He aches, everywhere, and it’s so dark that the dim light from the hallways seems painfully bright. He squints at Rey’s silhouette in the doorway. Her long legs are goose-bumped over her knees.

“You’re cold, darlin’. Come here,” he says, slow and slurring, and then he realises he’s about to follow that up by telling her how much he wants to keep her warm. He sways and it’s morning and he’s late and panicked and he’s not sure why he’s lying down anymore. He shakes his head, “Divert gate’s broke, I gotta go… fix it…”

He’s trying to push the sheets back, they’re damp and he’s shivering. His hands won’t work like he wants them to and she’s there suddenly, dark outline, hair falling loose over him, a gentle hand on his forehead, pressing him back into the sheets.

“Ben, you’re sick, sweetheart.” It sounds like Rey’s voice but that’s what his mother called him and everything is leaning sideways and Ben thinks he might puke.

“I’m alright,” he tells her, frowning hard, trying to move her back from him so he can get up. But she’s stronger than him, cool palms pushing flat on his clammy chest, and he’s down before he knows what hit him.

“Come on, big guy, let’s get you back to bed.”

It’s the endearment, the warmth and worry in her voice, the fact that everything seems surreal, like this is all a dream and it’s safe to say whatever he wants to her. “You’re so beautiful,” he tells her and he can see the faint curve of her mouth, wants to bring it closer any way he can, “I used to hate this ranch... when you’re here… ‘s my favourite place.”

She stops, and the cottony feeling in his brain recedes, so he can hear her shaking breath.

“Mine too.”

Later, he’ll think he imagined her response because everything comes in flashes after that. He’s stripped to his boxers without knowing how he got like that, there’s something cool on his forehead and something warm soothing lines down his body. The smell of clean sheets and her freshly washed hair. He’s shivering and she’s beside him, stretched out with an arm over his chest. She lets him pull her closer, tuck her head under his chin, perfectly curved into him. He knows he’s talking, that she’s shushing him with cool hands and warm lips, but he can’t catch the words before they’re gone.

When he comes around, it’s to the sound of her arguing outside his door.

“I have it, Rose.”

“Doc says if doesn’t eat today, we gotta call him ba-“

“I know exactly what the doctor said. I called him again this morning. He’ll be here at two to check on him.”

There’s a reluctant “Alright then,” from Rose. By the time Rey comes back in, alone, he’s resting against the headboard.

“Hey, you should be lying down,” she tells him and her hands are on him, a palm on his forehead, on either side of his face, pushing at his chest, and finally, when he doesn’t move, pulling the sheet a little higher over his stomach.

“I’m fine, Rey,” he tells her, smiling softly as she fusses. He should be flustered now, hiding it with mild annoyance. He’s always hated being taken care of, but he can stand this. He watches her worried expression, her quick fingers on his skin. She reaches for water he wants so desperately that he lets her lift it to his mouth. She’s so open, so clearly showing concern. Ben could watch it for a lifetime.

“Thank you,” he tells her when she sets the glass down.

She moves toward him, chin tipped up the barest inch, and Ben knows it without a shadow of a doubt, an intuitive understanding he would never dream to question. Rey had kissed him. She’d kissed his mouth when he was so delirious with fever that he would never stand a chance of remembering it. And she wants to do it again, right now, in the grey morning light of his bedroom. Ben could see it in the way her eyes turned almost black, with just the barest hint of green at the edges. He stays quiet, held still so he wouldn’t scare her while she wavers in front of him.

“I’ll get you something to eat,” she whispers and Ben’s response is immediate, directed at her mouth.

“I ain’t hungry.” He has to clench his fingers a little, to stop himself saying more.

She whimpers and then throws herself forward, avoiding his mouth but climbing right into his lap with her arms tight around his neck. He holds her for minutes, smoothing her hair, rocking her a little. Daytime touching that she’d never allowed before.

“I was so worried,” she breathes into his neck and Ben feels his chest expand.

“Breakfast!” Rose’s voice cuts through the rapid tapping on his bedroom door. Rey jumps to her feet, stands awkwardly by his bed as the door opens, and Rose lances through the tension like it was smoke in the room. She holds a tray in one hand and presses the side of her belly with the other. The bump looks bigger than she could handle already, though she's only seven months gone.

Ben smiles at her, takes the offered tray, while Rey slips from the room as if she’d never been there at all.

* 

“Stay. Please.”

He’s sitting up, watching her pull her nightdress over her head. It sticks to her in streaks and spots. Her breasts, her stomach, his come seeping through the cotton. There’s a glistening line across her collarbone that he wants to wash away with soft, soothing strokes. But she won’t let him.

“Not tonight.”

He should shut his mouth, he knows it. But he doesn’t.

“Buzzard’s yours, you know,” he says, and she stops by the door, one hand on the frame. He keeps going, but there’s jumping in his stomach so he has to lower his voice, “I’d sign him over to you if I could, but… there’s paperwork. He’s yours, anyway.”

Shit. Months since he asked her about her past, months since he’d been that stupid. And now he’s bartering a horse worth almost a year of her wages if she’ll tell him who she is.

“I never asked you for that.” Cold, angry. And then she’s gone.

He leaves for work without her the next morning, says nothing when she doesn’t show up for dinner. Days later, he checks her room, knowing how quiet she can be, hoping maybe she’s just waiting for him to apologise. Stepping inside that bedroom for the first time since his mother died, there’s an ache in his chest. When he finds it empty, it’s so bad he has to sit on the floor.

Rey comes back at night, seven weeks later, naked and trembling, with a crop held tight in her fist. Ben still can’t think about what she made him do to her.

She comes to him almost every night after that, asking for rough treatment. But now there’s no softness after, even if he begs.

* 

“You’re hurting that man.”

Ben had woken sometime after midnight and gone searching for her when he found his bed empty, blearily pulling on jeans. Instead of finding Rey, he heard Rose talking, from his spot in the darkness at the top of the stairs. They were in the kitchen, low light, and the sound of Rose’s heavy pacing. Her tone made him wince. She shouldn’t be this het up so close to her due date. He’d already put one foot on the stairs to tell her to sit down when he heard her speak again, and it hit him all at once what she was saying.

“I don’t know what you’re doing to him, Rey, but you’re hurting him.”

“I think… I think I am.”

Ben’s never heard her sound like that. Never heard her voice anything but steady. But her breath catches now and she hauls it back in with a shuddering breath he can hear all the way to its bones. It sounds like the start of a wail that doesn’t come at all. He’s already halfway down the stairs when Rose starts to talk again.

“I know, love,” Rose soothes, all trace of tension gone from her voice, “but it’s enough now. You gotta stop, you hear? He doesn’t deserve it. You’re not the only one who had it bad.”

“What do you mean? When he hurt his back?”

Ben freezes on the last step, unsure of what he wants to do next. Part of him wants to run, let Rose tell her everything so he never has to. Like a coward.

“He didn’t just break his back, he lost everything, Rey. Everything that matters. He lost-“

“Rose.”

Ben interrupts her, one low-spoken word that stops them both cold. He’s standing in the doorway, not certain of when he’d decided to move. They both turn to stare at him and Rose finally sits down, the cup of tea that Rey has made steams untouched in front of her.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I just won’t stand for it. She needs to know.” Rose takes him in as she talks, wary eyes roving over his bare chest and his low-slung jeans. He’d left the top button of his fly open and there are three long scratch marks marring the skin there, disappearing beneath the denim. Without either of them ever having to say it, Rose figure’s out what’s happening.

She reaches out, places one hand on top of Rey’s, and takes a shocked sip of her tea.

“Easy now, Rose,” Ben tells her. When Rey looks at him, Ben realises he’s used the same tone as when he’d warned her about Buzzard when they first met, as if Rey might bite. Of all the times he’s hurt her, bruised her, all those awful things he’s done at her request, she’s never once looked at him like this.

“Rose, honey, it’s late. Hux’ll be worrying. I’ll drive you home.”

When he comes back, it’s near dawn and Rey is in her room. She doesn’t answer his quiet knock and after a while, Ben has no choice but to leave her be. She doesn’t come to his room after that, though he hears her sometimes, hovering outside.

* 

Rey rides like nothing Ben’s ever seen. Like she’d learned without a saddle. She doesn’t control the horse the way he would, lets Buzzard pull away until she feels like he’s had enough, then reins him in with short, soft tugs and a hand to his neck like she’s asking instead of telling. And Buzzard complies, every time.

When she sees Ben, standing at the gates, she races to the fence, braced low over the horse’s neck, and jumps the wooden barrier like it was nothing. He should tell her not to teach him that, to let Buzzard see how easy it would be for him to fly the coop if he has half a chance. But he stays silent as she circles back to him, pulls up, and dismounts with a sturdy athletic leap that makes him wince. He studies the horizon while she hooks the reins to the post, tries not to think the words “Harder,” or “More” in an accent that has yet to lose its fancy lilt.

“Everything OK?” she asks, squinting into the sunlight over his shoulder.

“Rose is startin’,” he tells her, “Mid-wife’s on her way but she’s asking for you.”

Brilliant. A smile so bright he thinks he might burn up in it. Ben’s never felt the urge to touch her more. It’s such a vicious impulse that he has to shove his hands in his pockets to stop himself. Dimples, white teeth, and fine lines around her eyes. The fucking joy there. He’d break himself in half to see it again but she’s already running, whipping past him to tear up the hill to where his truck is idling.

* 

The night Rose has her baby is the first night Ben gets to sleep with Rey. She taps on his door ten minutes after they go to bed and waits till he tells her to come in. There’s no fucking, no fighting, no running away. Ben pulls her into him and they talk a little, about how small the baby’s hands are, how Hux had smiled so wide that Rey had laughed and everyone in the room had turned to look at her.

“Have they really never heard me laugh before?”

Ben shrugs, lazy, one-shouldered, “Not so big, I guess.”

She has her back to him and he’s curled around her so that there’s no part of her untouched by him. Her hand is loose around his wrist, thumb stroking lightly over the back of his hand. She tips her head when he nuzzles behind her ear, arching into him without heat or connotation. Just because it feels good. There are fading lines on her back that Ben knows intimately, and scars on her body that he’s never asked her about and never will. It's the happiest he's ever been.

The next morning, when he sets a cup of coffee down in front of her, he touches her shoulder, hesitant and light. Rey covers his hand with her own, give him a small smile, and presses once before she picks up her cup.

* 

“My dad jumped the railings,” he tells her, out of nowhere.

It’s just them, riding the fence line, checking for faults during a break in a week-long storm. Finn and Poe are on the north side, they’ll meet at some point along the river and head back together. Rey hasn’t spoken in over an hour and there’s that heavy feeling of thunder tracing an ache across his broken parts. The words bubble up out of Ben before he can suck them back.

Buzzard stalls, sensing Rey’s jolt, and she gives him a quick click of her tongue to urge him on that Ben takes as permission to keep talking, though he’s not sure he could stop now even if she told him to.

“He wasn't even supposed to be there. They never wanted rodeo for me. But he came, all the same. I’d got hung up, it was dragging me, and the barrelmen couldn’t pull me loose. Dad rode rough in his day - he must have known I was a goner. I don’t remember much but there’s a video somewhere, shows him cut me free. Never could bring myself to look at it.”

He can’t bring himself to look at Rey either. He stares straight ahead, watching the thick grey skies.

“He got hurt, real bad. Died in hospital three days later. My mom didn’t last the month. I was out for it. Hux told me everything when I woke up. If it wasn’t for Rose, I would’a lost the ranch too. She sold almost everything to keep the place running when I was out of action. That was about two years before you came here.”

He takes a breath, jaw working, and finally, looks at her.

There are tears streaming down her cheeks. She’s holding the reins so tight that her gloves look fit to bust at the knuckles. Ben is certain he’s never spoken so much in his entire life. His throat hurts with overuse. But he can’t stop.

“You don’t have to tell me anything. If I never know where you came from, I’ll still be thankful you’re here. But I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Rey. Because I love you.”

Too far. Too fast. Ben knows it the moment the words leave his mouth.

He’s seen that girl talk down bucking horses, seen her march right out into a lightning storm to help stake down tarps. He’s watched her square off with Rose, something that Ben’s loathe to do. But she’s only ever been scared of him. He’s see’s it now, how she’d soothed her fear. She’d made him hurt her, in every way she could think of. Ben had let her hurt him back, and still hold her after, for as long as she could take it.

But this is her breaking point and Rey’s gone before he can think of something to say that might make a difference. She’s racing over uneven ground, the river coming up on her right side and Ben gets that same sense of dread he’d had in the chute on the day he lost his whole world.

His horse is faster than hers but he still kicks to push faster. She’s tearing down the trail, edging closer to the river. She doesn’t look back when he calls to warn her. He’s almost reached her when the riverbank gives way. A huge slide of mud and rock and battered reedy grass. Buzzard keeps her upright, sliding down on his side with a terrified, wheeling bray.

Ben has to pull hard so he doesn’t follow her over. By the time he jumps from the saddle, they’re already in the water, twisted up in the current. She’s been thrown from her seat, clinging to the reins with one hand while the other slaps the surface of the water. Ben’s a strong swimmer, but the river’s fit to burst its banks and the sound of it drowns their screaming. He races ahead of them along the trail, picks the first tree that looks sturdy enough to take his weight, and leans out over the water.

“Rey! Reach up!”

She’s pulled toward him, the rapids pushing her as she tries to keep her head above them. He stretches further down, so if she misses his hand, he can grab her collar, haul her out by the scruff. She's still screaming as she nears him, still holding the reins, but now he can hear the words. The horse's name, over and over, like she's asking Ben to save him. The hand she lifts out toward him is the one holding the leather.

He catches her wrist and Buzzard’s tumbling roll yanks the reins. Ben has to twist her hand around so the strip won’t break her fingers when it pulls loose. She's still screaming as he hauls her from the water, hoarse over the deafening rush of the churning beneath them. The muscles of his bicep pop and tear but he won’t stop, strained neck and lips curled back and flat, concentrated effort as he brings her to the bank. Ben throws her next to him and topples beside her. When he plants a palm on her back, she looks up, but not at him. She zeroes in on the horse in the water. He’s struggling and turning and peeling out panicked white-eyed whinnying whenever his head breaches the whitecaps.

Rey struggles to her knees, stands in a loping, staggered walk, as if trying to follow the horse. She keeps going, lurching down the path until Ben puts his arms around her. He drags her back with him till he’s against a tree trunk and then sinks down, too tired to hold them both up. She’s struggling, calling out, the wet sop of her clothing seeping onto his stomach and legs. He holds her tighter.

“Rey, sweetheart, there ain’t nothing you can do.”

He says it soft, right into her ear but Rey only struggles harder, roars at him, calls him every filthy word she learned from Poe. He won’t let her go. She turns the whole way round in his lap, trying to break her arms free of his, and still, he holds her.

Finally, she begs, pushing her forehead into his neck and “Please, Ben. Please!” comes at him over and over again until he thinks he might break right open. Just when he’s sure he’ll let her go, follow her until she runs out of steam, Rey buckles. Not like he thought she would, but then, she’d never once failed to take him by surprise.

She kisses him so hard his arms go limp. She could run now, if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. Her hands rove under his open jacket, pulling at the buttons of his shirt. The cold, wet press of her palms brings him to life again and he sits up to kiss her harder. There’s the salt of her tears, right there on his tongue, and he follows it to her jaw as she works his belt open. He doesn’t think to stop her. He’ll give her anything she wants.

It’s a frenzy of tugging and pulling, clothes opened only as much as they need to fuck. He’s rough without her having to ask, like she’s trained him as well as she had Buzzard, so attuned to her that she only needs to give him gestures to follow.

It’s only when her bare knees are in the dirt and she’s wedged between his body and the bark that Ben’s able to slow himself. Her tears come through hard breaths, and the noise she makes when he stops fucking her is somewhere between a groan and a long, hollow howl. It’s all those terrible things that fill her mind, given a voice. It’s the most awful sound he’s ever heard and he already knows that, even years from now, when he thinks of this moment, he’ll recall it so perfectly that it will break his heart all over again.

He moves back from her, pulling his hips away, and tucks himself back into his jeans. Rey tips her head back so far he feels as if she’s looking down at him, though he’s towering over her. For the life of him, Ben can’t think of one word to say, but he still tries.

“I’m so sorry, Rey.” He doesn’t even know what he’s apologising for. All of it, probably, every lick of pain she’s ever felt. He’d take it all from her, if he could.

When she pulls up her jeans without a word, he stands, holds out his hand to her. She doesn’t talk when she takes it, or on the way back to the main house. She sits side-saddle in his lap and by the time they reach the yards, she seems to have shrunk in size, her clothes drying onto her thin frame. He feels her breath on his neck, memorising the warmth of her, how she fits right there, tucked between his arms, jostled and swayed and still somehow entirely unmoving. 

As they crest the hill, Hux, Poe, and Finn are riding out to meet them. Ben waves, once, and Hux turns his horse to gallop back toward the main house. By the time they reach the kitchen, Rose has hot water boiling for coffee and blankets spread over the chairs for them. Ben half-carries Rey into the room, stops the others from helping with nothing but a hard scowl in their general direction. He ignores Rose’s fussing, a difficult task made easier when he feels Rey start to shake. He picks her up where she stands and turns his back on his friend’s questions, carrying her up the back stairs.

She’s silent as he fills the tub, limply following his quiet instructions as he helps her out of her wet clothes. He sits on the floor beside the bath, washes the dirt from her body, hums a little when her silence starts to ache in his gut. 

Ben remembers this. He’d seen that dull look in the mirror for months after the hospital. It won’t help to make her talk, not now. Instead, he dresses her and lays her down in her bed, sitting beside her with her listless hand sandwiched between his own. Rose brings tea she doesn’t drink and food she won’t eat. Ben drip-feeds her water and waits till her eyes close and her breath evens out before he goes downstairs to talk to Hux.

*

They found Buzzard six miles downriver, washed up in an inlet on the Holdo farm. Hux stood back as Ben hunkered down to the barely-breathing horse, ran his hand over a clearly-broken hind leg. The sound of the shotgun barrel clacking closed moved him to stand. 

“Hux, no,” he said, hands on hips, and tipped his chin skyward to let the rain cool his eyelids. 

Hux held out the rifle to him with a confused expression. “That leg’s broke and you know it. You gotta put it down, Ben. Unkind not to.”

“It’s Rey’s horse. No-one’s killing him.”

*

It takes three months for the leg to heal. Three months where Rey lived and breathed in the stables, sleeping and eating next to a sedated Buzzard to keep him from standing before he was ready. He’d never be saddled again, but he’d live. 

The first time he walks the yard in her loose hold, Rey lets out a whoop, the loudest sound she’s made since she howled by the river, and runs straight at Ben, vaulting into his waiting arms with a smile so wide that Ben is sure his heart’s gonna wrench from his chest. 

*

“I tried so hard not to love you, Ben.”

It was her whisper that woke him. Thin, grey light and soft breath on his check and everything more fragile than he would have believed possible. Her fingers were locked between his own but he could still feel them shaking. He didn’t open his eyes, brought her hand to his mouth, kissed her knuckles, and kept his mouth there as she told him everything she could.

“My name is Rey Niima…”

She was sparse on details, stopping when she couldn’t go on anymore. It didn’t matter, Ben could fill in the gaps with the scars he’d run his tongue over so many times he’d know their shape in the pitch dark.

When she’d finished, Ben turned on his side and kissed her with small, soft, closed-mouthed presses to her forehead, her eyelids, and cheeks. Finally, he kissed her mouth, gently opening her lips so he could taste the words she couldn’t tell him yet. By the time he’d stopped, Rey’s pale cheeks had pinked-up and he pulled her chest against his and took her, languid and soothing. At first, on his fingers, barely touching her before she came with a sweet sigh into his open mouth. Then with his cock between her legs, rocking her gently along its length, over and over, until her eyebrows came together and he could feel her tighten and throb. He slipped inside her as she came, shifting her onto her back so he could feel her quiver with it. 

As slow as he tried to be, he couldn’t help the snap of his hips, the hard thrusts that wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his back. But Rey urged him on, still wild, still as broken as he was, but, now, as much his as he was hers. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm Irish, I've been to the US exactly three times and have seen exactly 17 cowboys in that time (you're goddamn right, I counted) so please forgive any glaring errors, I really did try my best to sound authentic. 
> 
> Thank you to the amazing [@JadedWarrior](https://twitter.com/jadedwarrior5) for helping me fix the ending and being a wonderfully encouraging beta. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and those who leave Kudos and Comments have a special place in my heart. 
> 
> Please come say hi on Twitter [@DenzerWriter](https://twitter.com/DenzerWriter)


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